Downton Abbey 2: Une nouvelle ère

I haven't watch the TV series outside a few random episodes I walked in on but this movie still managed to engage me right from the start. The humour is great, the acting is phenomenal and there are many emotional moments throughout the film. This film makes me proud to be British.

It's a perfect example on how to do strong female characters. For some reason Hollywood's method to creating strong female characters is just give them characteristics typically associated with men. This film manages to have strong female characters while actually keeping them female. Not only that but it's also the perfect example on how to include gay characters without it feeling forced.

I love that this is a film about making a film. I especially love how the film basically pokes fun at the entire industry. As someone who has worked on film sets, this movie perfectly depicts the behind the scenes of filmmaking. The sound guy in this movie is my favourite character since I have met many sound guys and they pretty much all act in the exact same way he does.

Set in 1928, following the wedding of Lord Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) son-law Tom Branson (Allen Leech) to Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton), film company British Lion sends a request to Downton Abbey asking to produce a film using Downton as the location. While Lord Grantham is not keen on the idea, Lord Grantham's eldest daughter and agent of the estate Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery) convinces Robert to approve the idea due to Downton's roof being in dire need of repair. As Downton reluctantly welcomes the film production to the estate with some members of the household staff excited while others repulsed, a discovery comes to light that Lord Grantham's mother, Dowager Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith) is the owner of a villa in the south of France that was willed to her by a late acquaintance of hers Marquis de Montmirai which has continued to be used by his surviving wife and son. As the Crawley's, except for Mary, head to the villa at the request of the current Marquis, Robert soon finds reason to question his legacy and lineage.

Following the release of the first Downton Abbey film in 2019 wherein the $20 million production grossed $200 million worldwide, creator Julian Fellowes sated he and the cast had ideas for further continuation. After Fellowes finished working on The Gilda Age, Fellowes wrote the script in 2020 and following various work arounds for COVD protocols in 2021 the film began production. Released in 2022, the film didn't deliver the same numbers as its predecessor making $90 million against a $40 million budget, it was seen as a success overall due to the nature of the cinema landscape favoring blockbuster tentpoles while adult skewing material such as Downton went to streamers. As a film it's very much in line with the first Downton Movie where it's a chance to revisit the characters and world audiences fell in love with in the TV show.

As with the previous film, Downton Abbey: A New Era is a very busy film with many things going on in both major plotlines and individual character moments so once again it's pretty much like you're watching an episode of the TV series except on a theatrical budget. The two major plotlines are both very rich with the filming plotline playing as a clever culture clash with elements of Singing in the Rain as we see this silent melodrama filmed at Downton need to be retrofitted into a "talkie" due to the rising popularity of talkies in the wake of The Jazz Singer. The movie production crew colliding with the ordered world of Downton is somewhat similar to the royal staff rolling over the Downton Staff from the previous film, but there's enough differences that it doesn't feel like we're retreading ground. The secondary plotline involving Violet's inheritance of the French villa does stretch disbelief to an extent and does risk going into "soap opera" territory, but the writings strong enough that it avoids that pitfall.

If you enjoyed the TV series and the previous film, there's enough here to motivate longtime fans to indulge in a viewing. It's a very busy movie but it never feels overstuffed and most of the plot lines and revisits of characters hit instead of miss.

High-class soap-opera-like Downton Abbey: A New Era should be called what it really is: high-class melodrama. Here is a rambling story with too many characters, but who cares? Because it's told so well with each character clearly defined and loveable.

After the binge-worthy six-sessions TV series in the early 2010's, the 2019 film, with its visit from royalty, held up well enough to spawn this sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era, in which the aristocratic Crawley family is crawling into the 1930's, with The Great Depression, wars, and innovations imminent. The film creates a vitality even in a staid Brit world largely because of a robust screenplay and spot-on actors. Not to forget drone shots of the impossibly cinematic estate.

In fact, no melodramatic villain appears, if you exclude the arch-disturber, Change. Writer Julian Fellowes and director Simon Curtis have crafted a rousing fable about a new era as it approaches the third decade of the 20th century through the lens of a visiting Hollywood production to the Abbey.

Marry that modern incursion to the hidebound Brit tradition and you have a sentimental farewell to the old world, signified by the sharp-witted Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith), who is ready to pass the estate and a newly-added villa in the south of France to the younger Granthams. A formidable subplot is the change the Hollywood production itself must face as sound trounces silent movies and same-sex relationships emerge, galaxies away from our modern acceptance of sexual orientations.

The most moving scene is when the production learns it has to create a sound track in order to continue filming. Watching them sync the sound (dubbing so to speak) to the actors for the first time since they saw Jolson say a few words in The Jazz Singer is just as if we were in a time machine witnessing that monumental change almost 100 years ago.

Downton Abbey is a state of mind, not a place, where our dreams of upper-class blissful isolation clash with the realities of life both for the rich and the poor. Throughout is a benign sense of humanity's essential goodness and our common bonds. Cinema has brought us together in time and sympathy-see A New Era in a theater with its glorious visuals and commanding sound-We've come a long way, Baby.

I always try and avoid watching trailers or other spoilers for movies that I know I am going to watch, so this film was much more engrossing and emotional than I expected it to be!

It is definitely worth seeing in the cinema, as the cinematography, music and sound is very well done and best experienced on a grand scale.

Overall, it makes a nice change to see such a nice pleasant film and a change from the usual generic super hero movie.

Fans of the tv show and earlier film will get the most out of this, with plenty of dangling plot threads deftly picked up and woven into a satisfying series of resolutions.

There's plenty of strongly emotional moments here. It plays like one of the Christmas specials but more so, and combines an appropriately high stakes 19th century historical family mystery with an examination of an industry on the cusp of a revolution, as metaphor for Downton and the Crawleys doing their best to survive in a changing world. Hints are given how they will manage it.

This is not the place to start with Downton, and the movie assumes wise viewers know that. With so many characters, with so much history, the audience are given not so much introductions as little reminders.

As is traditional, Maggie Smith gets most of the best lines, but there are no weak performances. There's even a scattering of wisdom here and there among the drollery and drama.